Vikram and Subu explore ways to expand the time available in a persons life as a whole, and discuss the principles of Ikigai and incremental work to discover the purpose of life and avoid burnout.

Links

• Ikigai
• The Ikigai Diagram
• The Nothingness of Money by Lawrence Yeo
• The Clock Man by Shel Silverstein

Chapters

00:00 Pastries, Popcorn and Teeth
04:57 Time: The one true resource
11:57 Making Time and Ikigai
17:59 Controlling thoughts about money in your life
23:41 Trading money for time
27:15 Habits, discipline and incremental work
29:53 Viewing time as a form of currency
36:45 The Clock Man and Dharma
40:41 Outro


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Sampath Krishna takes Subu and Vikram on a story-telling trip to the Arctic and back, describing his encounters on the way, and explains what it means to take on a motorcycle ride of massive proportions. Always a traveler, and never a tourist - Sampath talks about the solitude of long rides, the journey into the inner self, and about exploration and discovery - in foreign lands, or within oneself.


Chapters

 00:00 Intro and Follow-up from The Giving Tree 
03:41 Motorcycle ride to the Arctic Ocean 
08:04 Avenging the last journey to the Arctic 
11:59 Being rescued and de-risking the ride 
15:50 How Sampath got into Motorcyle rides 
20:15 Planning vs Overplanning Travel 
26:15 Long way round, Long way down 
31:07 What is Vipassana, how does it work? 
34:49 Role of Silence in Vipassana 
39:23 Meditation and Influence on the Self 
41:52 Managing conditioned responses
44:05 Retaining realization of the Self 
50:12 Finding the balance 
56:34 Wrap up 

Links

• Full Transcript
• Horatio's Drive: America's First Road Trip
• Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman on their Bike Adventures
  • Long Way Up
  • Long Way Round
  • Long Way Down
• Adventure Rider
• Horizons Unlimited
• Vipassana Meditation
• 17 minutes of  meditation
• Bullet Journal

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Half life show's first book club episode! Subu and Vikram go back to the basics and talk about a timeless children's classic - The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, and all the lessons we can learn from it at any age.

Chapters

00:20  Follow up 
04:07  The Story of The Giving Tree
11:18  Unconditional Love and Materialism 
17:00  Finding Contentment and Happiness 
21:36  The bright side of life 
26:18  Outro 

Links

• Full Transcript
• The book
• The Giving Tree read by Shel Silverstein himself

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Subu and Vikram look back at how 2021 went, create new strategies for maximizing 2022, discuss what really grinds their gears and list out the good and bad.

Chapters
00:00 Date System Nerd Out 
05:31 Positives and Negatives of 2021 
10:07 New Ideas for 2022 
20:43 A Year of Focus 
33:21 Books and Audiobooks 
45:16 Podcasts 
48:57 TV Shows 
51:28 Outro 

Links

Episode Transcript
Onepod.fm - Subu’s podcast transcription and search software

Audiobooks

• Pierce Brown - Red Rising Saga
• Andy Weir - The Martian
• George R. R. Martin - Game of Thrones
  • Roy Dotrice - most number of character voices in an audiobook (224)
• Carl Sagan - Cosmos
• Carl Sagan - Contact
• Richard Feynman - Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman

Books - Fiction

• Marcus Zusak - The book thief
• Stephen King - The Dark Tower series
• Ken Follett
  • The Pillars of the Earth
  • The Evening and the Morning

Books - Non-fiction

• Devdutt Pattanaik - Jaya
• Edwin F. Bryant - The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
• Robert Lustig - Metabolical
• Dr. Peter Attila - An Advantaged Metabolic State

Podcasts

• Cortex Podcast 
• All-in podcast
• The unmade podcast
• Lex Friedman podcast
  • Elon Musk
  • Kevin Systrom
  • Vincent Racaniello
• The Huberman Lab
  • Perfecting sleep with Dr. Mat

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In this episode, Vikram and Subu discuss work-life balance using the analogy of four light bulbs. Vikram presents a holistic approach to defining the four light bulbs, and Subu describes how managing expectations and priorities within constraints has reduced anxiety and increased health and happiness.

Chapters

00:00 Movie Nostalgia
02:25 The Four Light Bulbs Concept
06:48 Subu's four lightbulbs
09:00 Vikram's four lightbulbs
16:30 Calibrating your lightbulbs
23:00 Prioritizing whats important
27:09 The end of immortality
31:02 Renewed focus on health
35:20 Desired form of happiness
37:25 Outro

Links

• Hello Internet - Four Light Bulbs episode
• Four thousand weeks: Time management for mortals - Oliver Burkeman

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How do you start a new project and make it successful? Vikram and Subu discuss starting the Half Life Show, and how they navigated challenges as first-time podcasters. They also share their experiences with technical blogging and open source programming, while identifying their past mistakes, finding strategies to beat inertia, and brainstorming ideas to sustain and grow a new project into something successful.

Links

• 1000 True Fans
• Black Earth - Subu's and Vikram's previous project
• Subu's Technical Blog
• Scikit-RF - FOSS project that Vikram contributed to
• Trevor Noah's Book - Born a Crime

Chapters

00:03 Kissing the Rug
02:21 Narcissistic Creations
06:10 Starting a Podcast
11:15 1000 True Fans
13:46 Having a Consistent Workflow
19:27 Beating Inertia
24:37 Hidden Benefits of New Projects
28:59 Sustaining and Growing Projects
35:18 Outro

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Ever wondered what language you think in, or why you prefer subtitles in foreign films and anime? From Dostoevsky to Camus, what did we lose in book translations? Do you find yourself using multiple languages in the same sentence and will your children speak all the languages you do?

In this episode, Subu and Vikram explore the power of language in the emotions they convey, how we perceive them, and how it connects us to our past and the stories almost forgotten.

Links

• Transcript

Chapters
00:00 Still uncashed cheques
01:52 Snacks, done and dusted
04:05 How's your sex drive?
07:45 How Language affects Perception
12:34 Lost in Translation
15:35 What's the Good Word?
19:54 Reconnecting with our past
27:13 Talking to our polyglot families
31:42 The value of social interaction
36:47 Reliving Lost Stories
42:54 Outro

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Should you be a helicopter parent and what are the signs of a good parent? Children are not playing enough! Are you expecting too much out of your school? Expensive school districts in US, how has COVID affected education? What are the  four planes of child development? Effects of early education in children, how teachers shape the future of kids, and modern education in India.

In this episode, Vikram and Subu discuss the education choices they face as parents, reflect on their own experiences, and imagine a new and bright future.

Links

• Transcript
• The four planes of development in the Montessori method of education
• The school Vikram and Subu studied at
• Vikram's secondary high school (11th and 12th Grade) - The Eton of the East
• National Cadet Corps (India)
• Topographic map
• Greenwood High, one of the new schools

Chapters
03:42 Getting kids to the Ivory Tower
08:23 Manufacturing Graduates
10:41 Difficult Parenting Decisions
14:20 Lets be good parents
22:15 4 Planes of Child Development
25:59 The Lost Decade of Education
33:07 Good teachers shape futures
36:26 Getting bang for the education buck
40:31 Modern education in India
43:04 Post-Covid Education
47:41 Outro

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Subu and Vikram discuss the role of luck in science, career and their own lives

Links

• Episode Transcript
• Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
• The accidental discovery of viagra
• The Unfair Advantage
• Bounce, Matthew Syed

Chapters

00:00 Intro
00:34 Wasabi and Babies
03:33 Did Feynman get Lucky?
08:30 Vikram's own aha moment
11:37 Purposeful Practice and Unfair Advantage
15:10 Getting lucky with Viagra
17:26 Good Friends and Lucky Failures
27:30 Cringey Metaphors
30:00 How Vikram and Subu met
33:36 Luck in Career
38:39 Outro

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Vikram and Subu are heavy metal musicians disguised as tech nerds who obsess over living life to the fullest while balancing family, career and personal hobbies. In this podcast, they discuss a layman's approach to living a meaningful life, with anecdotes and inspirations from their own experiences. After realizing they spend half their waking lives at work, Subu and Vikram embarked on a quest to find ways to enrich their other half-life - the one they have control over and filled with things that matter most - to make life a memorable journey.

Episode Links 

• Website
• Transcript

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